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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIndiana lawmakers have sidelined a proposal that would have allowed immigrants living in the country illegally to obtain state-issued cards giving them permission to drive.
A state Senate committee had endorsed the bill in early February but it failed to advance through another committee before a deadline this week for action.
The bill aimed to establish driver privilege cards that are already issued in several other states. The proposal would have had Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles issue the cards to immigrants who pass the state’s driving test, have paid Indiana taxes in the past year, submitted to a fingerprint background check and provide proof of auto insurance.
Immigrant advocates cheered the Homeland Security and Transportation Committee’s support for the bill after similar proposals introduced over the past decade were never taken up in the Republican-dominated Legislature. The bill, however, didn’t gain Senate Appropriations Committee approval, which was needed because of the BMV’s estimated $1.4 million cost to develop the new license.
Republican Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray said he appreciated the argument from bill supporters that such a program would improve safety on the state’s roadways and reduce the number of uninsured drivers.
Bill opponents raised objections to the state giving legal driving privileges to people who were not following federal immigration laws.
Republican Sen. Blake Doriot of Goshen, the bill’s sponsor, called federal immigration policy a “bipartisan screwup” for decades but said immigrants were an important part of the state’s workforce, such as in the recreational vehicle industry, which is a major employer in his northern Indiana district.
Bray said Thursday that such a policy shift sometimes takes several years to overcome legislative opposition.
“It’s an idea that I would imagine will continue to come back but just hard for some people to get there,” Bray said.
Eighteen states, including California, Illinois, New York and Utah, already have approved similar driving cards in recent years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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The Republicans shouldnit have discarded this bill.
Illegals are already here and driving. Employers desperately need their
labor and the immigrants that are here need to drive to their jobs.
Let them drive –
1). To their jobs where their labor is needed.
2). By being legal they now can be insured.
There’s a reason why other states have legalized them.
The reason other states have legalized them is to make political hay for the elite uniparty class–for neo-con Republicans to exploit their labor (pay under the table), or for neo-lib Democrats to exploit their votes (because, yes, many of them DO vote).
Why not just kick them out and make them seek visas and work permits the old-fashioned way? And stop making the lawful migrant workers, or American citizens forced to compete against them (and lose), into suckers?
our legislature is a joke
Typical Indiana L. Watch insurance rates go up because they think they are federal lawmakers.
Excellent. The idea of licensing illegals is just another example of the left trying to normalize acceptance of people whose first act upon entering this country is to break our immigration laws. Come in the front door, legally, like my family did.